Stumble Remix
by Ivory Novelist
Summary: An updated version of the original "Stumble." Alternate ending for S6. House thinks he's lost everything. Wilson proves him wrong. A nonsexual House-Wilson love story. No slash. Spoilers for S6, including the season finale.
1. Chapter 1

AN: So. I don't know how regularly I'm going to work on this. But I kinda figured I might try rewriting the story because I'm now a much older, much BETTER writer than I was when I wrote "Stumble" originally.

If I finish this rewrite, it will stick closely to the original plot line but will not be identical. This is an alternate ending to Season 6; I thought it would be interesting to write it in that context, since the story focuses on the House-Wilson relationship, and if S6 had ended this way, it would leave things open to a lot of significant development in their relationship.

Anyway. No slash intended. Be prepared for male-male romantic friendship. I'll try to keep them in character as much as possible, within those parameters.

Again, no telling when or how often I'll update.

* * *

Stumble (Remix)

by Marie S. Crosswell

* * *

_Chapter 1_

_

* * *

_

In between the hospital and his apartment, House makes only one decision. He does not consider the long-term consequences of his choice; he thinks only of immediate relief, a classic drug addict thought process. For all the months he spent in that asylum, for all the therapy sessions with Nolan, the moment he passes through the hospital doors, he is exactly the same House he had been for all those years before losing his mind. He speeds on his motorbike, and the scarred muscles in his bad thigh throb hot. He blows through a red light on purpose and he turns corners too fast.

It isn't that he failed his patient. It's that he did everything right—everything—and still lost.

He tried to believe that his life could be different, that if he changed, the Universe would drop happiness in his lap. He got better because he thought the logical chain of events would lead to a reward.

He was wrong. Fuck him, he was wrong.

When he lets himself into his apartment, he leaves all the lights off in the living room and the hallway, throws down his backpack on the floor and limps down the hallway past his bedroom. Everything around him looks hazy, except for the bathroom when he flips the light switch and floods the room with white. The mirror above the sink stands out in his vision so clearly, his own face sharp in the glass, and he smashes it hard, harder than necessary because beneath all that pain is a rage good enough for a thousand windows.

His emergency Vicodin containers wait where he left them a year ago, before he admitted himself to Mayfield. Even then, with his career on the line, with the question of his sanity hanging in the balance, he wanted to leave the door open just in case. In case he lost everything else.

He sits on the floor with his back against the tub, hands shaking, skin hot and cold with sweat. He still smells like the dust at the accident site. His eyes are red with it, red with tears now too. He pops the cap off one bottle, shakes some pills into his palm and looks at them. First, he thinks of taking two, just enough for the pain in his leg.

The longer he looks at the small pile in his hand, the more he knows two won't be enough. All the Vicodin in the world won't be enough.

In this moment, he is flooded with self-loathing, swallows back disgust. Hannah's dead, and here he is again, feeling sorry for himself, going back to the drugs just like everyone used to tell him he would. He closes his hand around the pills, makes a fist, elbow on his knee and forehead resting against that fist. He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe as he feels his lungs shudder.

He cut off her leg for nothing. All that pain—for nothing. He can still hear the loud roar of the buzz saw, Hannah's scream echoing in the empty spaces of the rubble. She could have died with less suffering than that; she could have died with her leg still attached.

He sees her dark doe eyes in the ambulance, as he looked at her and realized there was nothing he could do.

He opens his fist and looks at the pills again, now sweaty in his hand. Never enough. Never, ever enough.

He pops the pills one by one into his mouth; he hasn't lost his ability to dry-swallow even after all this time. He sets the containers on the floor and turns himself over onto his knees, pushes himself up using the tub for support. He goes into his kitchen for a bottle of whiskey hiding on the top shelf in one of the cabinets and brings it back to the bathroom with him, all the while clenching his throat tight around a sob he refuses to let out.

Back on the floor, in the white light of his bathroom, he does the one thing he never thought he'd do. He lines his stomach with Pepto-Bismol and empties both bottles of Vicodin, floods his bloodstream with Jack Daniels. He cries, as he does it. He cries through all forty-seven pills, and once they're gone, he sips on the whiskey and waits for all sensation in his body to fade.

He turns his head for no reason at all, drowsy with the drugs and booze already, and a big chunk of the smashed mirror catches his eye. He reaches out for it, takes it clumsily in his right hand and holds it for a while, the whiskey bottle gripped in his left hand.

He feels that cool piece of glass against his skin for a long time. Meanwhile, he drinks more.

When he's had enough of the alcohol, he sets the bottle down on the floor and pulls up the sleeve of his jacket. He sets the sharpest edge of the glass against his wrist and blinks down at it, vision unclear.

The blood comes painlessly, clings to the glass even as he drops it again.

As he slips into unconsciousness, Cuddy's words float into his head: _What do you have, House? Nothing. _

Nothing.

* * *

After Foreman found him and told him about House and the dead woman, Wilson called House's cell phone five times in between the ER patients he attended. The first two calls, the phone rang until going to voicemail; the last three, the phone was shut off and never rang. As an hour passed, then thirty more minutes, Wilson felt the weight in his belly grow heavier. But he had to help as many of the Trenton victims as he could. Only when Cuddy appeared and told him to go home—a weary, meaningful look in her eyes—did Wilson finally throw away his surgical gloves.

He calls a sixth time in the car. He leaves a voicemail he doesn't expect House to answer, thinks for a minute, then calls House's apartment phone. The machine answers, and Wilson doesn't leave a message. He drives to the light where he could turn right toward his condo and Sam or left to House's place. He waits for the light to turn green, hesitates, then turns.

He's been friends with the man too many years to ignore this feeling, one he's felt more times than he should have. Something's wrong with his best friend.

* * *

Wilson still has a key to House's apartment; he would laugh if he weren't so worried. He lets himself in and calls out House's name but doesn't receive an answer. House's bike sits outside next to the stoop, so he must be home.

Wilson turns his head toward the shaft of light at the end of the hall, coming from the bathroom—and sees House's legs framed in the open doorway, body on the floor. Wilson lunges toward him, kneels in what little floor space he has, shakes House's by the shoulder and yells at him to wake up. He sees the empty containers of Vicodin and the whiskey bottle with only a little bit of alcohol left in it, sees no sign of vomit, catches sight of the pink Pepto-Bismol bottle on the other side of House's body, feels a warm wetness in his knees and looks down to see darkening blood all over the floor….. He fumbles for his cell phone without even processing what it all means.

Wilson demands an ambulance, hangs up on the operator without waiting for a full response, then shrugs out of his suit jacket and presses it against the wound in House's wrist. He tries to think of what else he might do, but he doesn't have any medical equipment on him. He looks for House's pulse in the right wrist and doesn't find one, presses his ear against House's chest and listens for a long time….

A faint, slow beat.

"You stupid bastard," he says, clenching his suit jacket around House's wound. Wilson leans his head into House's chest, realizes his whole body's trembling. A tear slips out of each eye, and he can't remember the last time he cried, except for when he lost Amber. "You stupid, stupid bastard."

Everything is quiet in the apartment, except for Wilson sniffling. He can smell the leather scent of House's jacket. He waits for the sound of the sirens. He says the kinds of things to House that you only say to someone when you know they can't hear you.

* * *

Wilson is the only person waiting outside House's room, in the lone fluorescent light of the hallway, the rest of which is cast in darkness. He told the head nurse on night shift not to call Cuddy or House's team; they should sleep after the day they've had. He paces with his arms crossed, sometimes hands on his hips, sometimes one hand rubbing the back of his neck. He drinks the bad, watery hospital coffee. He listens to the distant rustlings of other patients in their rooms, nurses roaming the corridors.

He rode with House in the back of the ambulance, and if the EMT noticed Wilson's hand holding House's, he didn't say anything about it.

It isn't the first time Wilson has faced House's death, and he hopes to God it isn't the last. But this is different—this was intentional. He never thought…. He never thought he would have to feel these feelings. It isn't just the terror and desperation. This time, there is the unique sting of betrayal. Nausea. A new flavor of pain that was never there before, all those other times Wilson might have lost him.

He remembers the day, not so long ago, when he asked House to be with him during the liver transplant surgery for Tucker. Those blue eyes, so earnest in a way House rarely is, and his words—so simple and true.

_If you die, I'm alone. _

Wilson bows his head, thumb and forefinger against his brow, tears burning like sea water. Sam's called him twice already, but he hasn't picked up the phone or called her back. Like so much of his adult life, Wilson can only see House, only thinks of House.

Now, of life without House.

"Don't do this," he whispers. "Don't do this to me."

Wilson shuts his eyes and sees House standing above him, on the other side of the glass, disappearing in the light of Wilson's unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Hope ya'll don't mind the short chapters.

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

The last time House dipped his soul in death, he was on a white-lit bus with Amber Volakis, telling her he didn't want to go back to life because Wilson would hate him. This time, he's sitting on his bathroom floor, broken glass glimmering next to him. He looks up and sees Hannah standing in front of him, smiling with those dark eyes. She has both her legs. His wrists are whole, and his legs are painless.

"What are you doing here?" he says to her.

Still smiling, she says, "Come to help you get up."

He goes quiet for a moment, knees up before him and arms resting on them. His guilt unfolds in the pit of his stomach, sickening him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I couldn't save you."

His blue eyes peer at her tentatively, expecting her to be furious, but her gentle expression remains.

"You think I blame you for that? You did what any doctor would. There just some things you can't control. You're not God."

He looks at her legs directly in front of him, the mocha skin smooth and clean.

"I want to be," he says.

"I know," says Hannah.

"Tell me something," he says. "Why do I deserve to live instead of you?"

He pauses, and she doesn't reply.

"You had a husband," he says. "A life. All I have is—this job. And I screwed that up too."

"One patient doesn't mean you're a failure," she says. She squats down in front of him, pretty eyes searching for his. "And I think you're wrong. I think you do have more than just this job."

He feels like a little kid talking to a mom—but he knows Hannah didn't have any children. He's both grateful and torn up about that fact; now, she'll never have any.

"How do you know what I have?" he says.

She looks at him so patiently.

"I know you have Wilson," she says.

House scoffs and breaks into a sarcastic grin.

"Right," he says. "The one who kicked me out of our condo for a woman he's already divorced once, that Wilson."

He keeps his head turned to the right, deliberately not looking at her because he's not sure how obvious he looks. She reaches out and lays a warm hand on his arm; a shock of cold shoots through his whole body.

"You and he have a lot of history," she says. "Don't you? Kinda like a married couple."

He wants to roll his eyes and play into the gay joke but doesn't.

"Look," she says, voice soft and well-meaning. "I don't know if you've ever been married to someone but—what I learned from my marriage is that, when you really love someone and you love em for a long time, there gonna be times when you hurt each other. When you do the wrong thing. I don't know him…. But I'm pretty sure you love him."

House meets her stare.

"And he loves you," she says. "That's gotta count for something, right?"

He hangs his head, reaches over with his opposite arm and lays his hand over hers. His chest feels tight, and he swallows down pain. He looks at her again and says,

"It doesn't make me less alone."

She purses her lips in sympathy. The whites of his eyes are pink at the edges and covered with a wet sheen.

"It should've been me," he says, his voice a breathy sound of grief. "It should've been me instead of you."

She tilts her head to one side, keeps her hand on his arm.

"But it wasn't, baby," she says. "It wasn't."

One tear hurries down the side of his face.

"Now, that man is waiting for you to go back to him," she says. "And you gotta go."

He barely shakes his head.

"No," he says. "I tried, Hannah. Now, I give up."

She doesn't try to argue. The two of them look at each other, there in the bathroom, in the light at the end of a dark hall.

* * *

In the morning, Wilson wakes up on the couch in his office, after sleeping for a few hours once the doctor let him know House was in the clear. He wakes up for no reason at all, except maybe the pale sunshine tip toeing through the glass sliding door behind him. He looks like hell in yesterday's clothes, hair messed and face aged with exhaustion and worry. He sits up and swings his legs over to rest his feet on the floor. He turns on his cell phone and sees he has two new voicemails, both from Sam, and he rubs his brow with one hand as he listens to them.

He slips back into his loafers, checks his watch, and figures Cuddy will arrive soon if she hasn't already. He'll call Sam later, he decides as he leaves his office and makes the trek down to House's room.

He stops at the door, looks at the man through the glass. House lies still in his bed, oxygen wire in his nose and across his face. His left wrist is wrapped in bandages, tucked discreetly at his side. They pumped his stomach last night, put him on some drug or other.

Wilson just looks for a long time. He leans against the glass door and the glass wall of the room and shuts his eyes to breathe.

For so long, he lived with the buried fear that House would do this one day—that it would stop being a game he played, flirting with his own self-destruction, pushing boundaries out of boredom. That a day would come when he _meant_ it.

Wilson never thought it would hurt this way, a pain so deep as if from a bottomless hole stabbed through him. He feels drowned in emotions, too many at once. He can't process them all. His legs feel weak, as if they'll fall out from under him if he tries to move.

A warm hand touches the back of his shoulder.

He turns and finds Cuddy behind him, her face filled with devastation, eyes as if she might cry.

"Someone just told me," she says, voice low and rough.

He can't bring himself to speak. He has that look he had when he knew Amber was a lost cause, eyes of a beaten puppy, cheeks flushed. Heartbroken.

Cuddy opens her arms, all the more motherly in instinct now then she was when Amber died. Again, he lets her hold him as he quietly breaks down. He's taller than she is, but that doesn't stop him from sagging his weight against her. It's early enough in the morning that only a few nurses are anywhere nearby and they're far enough away not to see him as he cries. Cuddy does her best not to join him. His own arms around her, he grips one of her slender shoulders hard in his hand. She rubs the flat of her palm up and down his back.

"It's okay," she says. "It'll be okay."

But this time, Wilson thinks, it honestly might not.


End file.
